iCloud Mail Outage Enters Second Day for Some Users

Wednesday September 12, 2012 6:57 AM PDT by Eric Slivka

Just about 24 hours ago, we began receiving the first reports of users having difficulties accessing their iCloud mail. Apple acknowledged the outage on its iCloud system status page relatively soon afterward, but noted that the issue only affected about 1% of customers.

Unfortunately for that small fraction of users, the issue has become a relatively major one, as their outage is now extending into a second day with Apple's regular system status updates providing no sign of improvement in holding steady at 1.1% of users being affected.

Apple has given no timeframe for a resolution of the issue beyond stating that "normal service will be restored ASAP", and an Apple spokesperson declined further comment upon being contacted by Macworld.

Top Rated Comments

For those defending apple herein, can you offer me a valid reason why I should not be pissed, appalled, or disgusted; as to why a simple email service has been out for me (and other users) for 27 hours? Believe it or not, many users have needs for Personal email today, 2012.

Case in point- we have a family wedding this weekend; and my wife is waiting for a dress to ship. Well, guess where her confirmation code was sent? For security, they now escalated the problem at the vendor to determine if she can get a new email to confirm her shipment- for some reason, she was sent an email on Tues to confirm; yet she did not get it and assumed all was well until she told me last eve she was not getting personal emails. My sons school is emailing me this week as we are setting up some events for the PTSA this Monday, now it a mad dash get everyone an alternative email addy. I for one do NOT like mixing my business emails with personal email addresses, ever.

All tied to MM/iCloud.

This is OK because it's apple, right?

My go-daddy email went offline on Monday (my website was not affected), but they acknowledged it; issued a statement, and it was back up (for me at least) in about 4 hours. I am not a huge fan of Go-daddy by any means; but this week has shown me who has a little wherewithal to at least issue some assistance or communication as to such a high service outage. I find over 1MM users being out kind of a high number at least.:rolleyes:

The iCloud/former MM status page is and always has been a worthless point of reference and nothing more. It's out, next update in 5 hours. It's out, next update in 3 hours....

Don't get all over dramatic here. It's just one feature of their iCloud service that's currently down. And it's not down for everyone. I'm patient and rational enough to understand that his kind of stuff happens and will wait for it to be resolved.

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Same goes for you too.

It would be over dramatic if it was the first, or maybe the second time this had happened. Or if it was indeed 'only' 1.1% of users. Even that in itself is a pretty big number. We're talking around 1.1 MILLION users without access to their email here. That's not really a valid case for '**** happens'.

Apple's had far too many problems with their iCloud/Me service. From painfully slow file transfers on the old iDisk platform (outside of the US you were lucky if you got 80kbps in/out) to several pretty well publicised outages over the last couple of years.

Interesting sidenote: It's not a cloud platform in the traditional sense at all - in fact its not even got a failover service. Apple use one location in California for the whole of iCloud. In comparison Gmail alone spans around 12+ datacenters across the globe.

This is outrageous. I've been without access to my email for more than 20 hours now. Apple support can't give me any answers and all we get is the same recycled update on the system status page. My business—my livelihood—is tied to my access.

Whilst I do sympathise - if you really cared about your livelihood, you wouldn't be running it on a free mail provider in the first place. They are technically under no obligation to provide you with anything at all.

**** like this happens! It'll be fixed soon. This is the first I've had any problem with the iCloud service. I have a gmail but it's my junk account. iCloud, IMO, is much better so that's why I stick with it.

Has Gmail ever been down this long? And I am paying for the extra storage so this is not a free service for me with no expectation of performance. Always amazes me the fanboy types that will defend Apple regardless of their actions. Bravo on the marketing though don't know how the fanboys don't feel like chumps when ths stuff happens.

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